To spice things up this month, SUPERSWEET took a break from looking for a method in our madness and turned our attention instead to the patterns in the small batch of singles that landed on our desktop in January.

Suffice to say, despite reviewing just six singles, it took us twice as long to do it. So, without further ado, join us as we play Mallet’s Mallet with this month’s singles...

First up, joyful Brighton sextet The Go! Team urged us to get involved with their ‘Buy Nothing Day’ - not difficult considering we’re well into the festive financial fallout that is January. This toe-tapping Go! Team-as-usual single features vocals from it-girl of the moment Bethany Best Coast and, to heighten its coolness, will only be released on vinyl.

Bethany and Best Coast are based in LA of course, and a ‘team’ is defined as a ‘group’ of people working or playing together, which provides us with not one but two tenuous links to the LA band formerly known as ‘Group’. Now going by the name Grouplove, their quirky new single ‘Colours’ has been kicking around a while now but gets a new release this month.

Squeaky-clean and Gap ad. ready as they look and sound, engage in enough sweaty Grouplove and you may find yourself having to pay a quick visit to ‘the clinic’ - which brings us, bright red and blushing, to Liverpool’s Indie veterans Clinic and the cruising title-track from latest album Bubblegum. Check out the animated video directed by Alisdair & Jock, which features a cat in a dress floating on its own bubblegum bubble.

Staying on the brightly-coloured candy theme, British super band Jonny release folky new single ‘Candyfloss’ this month, which sounds like a mixture of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci Teenage Fan Club. Oh wait, that’s because ‘Jonny’ is actually Euros Childs from Gorky’s and Norman Blake from Teenage Fan Club. Duh.

Anyway, you might have ‘Candyfloss’ at a zoo where you’d really expect to see at least one Elephant, which is also the name of the London dream-pop duo releasing their first single this month in the form of ‘Ants’. File with Beach House, Hundred In The Hands and The Naked And Famous.

Staying with the animal theme for the final release of the month, it’s rural Derbyshire’s You Animals with their Same Sky, Different Sea EP. Okay, so it actually came out in December but we were distracted by the pretty lights...

To complete the circle of increasingly tenuous links; there’s six people in You Animals and six people in The Go! Team and You Animals are giving away their EP free, which means you don’t have to buy it - which brings us back to the Go! Team’s ‘Buy Nothing day’. Phew!